Opinion: Familiar Friday

Friday was sickeningly familiar. The initial disbelief upon hearing the magnitude of the shooting, with a lingering, desperate suspicion that someone at the Associated Press made a mistake as to the number of victims. But then comes the reading of the preliminary number of victims, then the revised number, then the official number. The helicopter footage showing tiny people scurrying to and fro in the parking lot while the voice of the CNN anchor reads the make and model of the firearms and how many were discovered. Finally comes the name of the shooter and that most painful of rhetorical questions; “Why?”Yes, I remember this. We all do. We have been through this too many times. We all have the list in our heads. Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora… Newton, Connecticut has now joined them.Also familiar were the responses of the public. Nearly simultaneous were the digital and literal cries of those who wish to see more firearm restrictions and those who wish to see less. The petition page of the White House’s official website was flooded with demands relating to gun control. One titled, “Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress” reached the 25,000 signatures necessary for a White House response in a matter of hours.There were some unfamiliar things about Friday. We have seen President Barack Obama address the people on a number of occasions such as this, but this was the first time he did so while visibly choking back tears. Perhaps the knowledge that most of the dead were children was twisting at the soul of this father of two. Perhaps the weight of the bullets and casings and blood that have fallen in mass shootings during his presidency has become too heavy a burden. Perhaps it’s both.On Friday night, dozens of gun control advocates stood in front of the White House, with its flag at half-mast, to hold a candlelight vigil for the dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Some held signs that said things like “Public Safety is America’s First Freedom” and “No More Lives Shattered By Gun Violence.” They formed themselves into a circle, lifted their candles in the air and held a moment of silence for the victims.Several of them stood inside the circle and spoke. One was a former public school teacher from Newtown. Another man stood up and declared, “My politics changed today.” The man vowed never to vote for another candidate who does not support gun control. A young girl stood before the crowd and identified herself as a middle school student. “The thought that these kids won’t return to their parents is unbearable to me,” she said. “I feel like all of those kids were my brothers and sisters.”As the circle began to break up, a particularly irate man rode in on a bicycle. “We should blame ourselves,” he said. “The politicians just reflect us.”He bemoaned the prospect that in a couple of months no one will be talking about gun violence until the next tragedy strikes. Some of them tried to reassure him that this time the people wouldn’t tolerate inaction, but he was skeptical, and rightly so.I am reminded of Thomas Jefferson, who famously observed, “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” We have become accustomed to days like Friday. It is all sickeningly familiar, and familiar too is the striking amount of inaction that the people are apparently willing to tolerate. What I now desire is the unfamiliar. I desire intolerance. I desire action, and I don’t yet know what that action should resemble. Perhaps it will be stricter gun laws. Perhaps it will be better psychological screening. Perhaps it will be both. But something must change.On Friday my family prayed before dinner and we prayed for the families of the people who were killed in Newtown, Connecticut. We prayed not for simple solutions but rather to be “the hands and the feet of the Lord.” Fate, faith, God and the Universe cannot stop this bleeding. We can tolerate inaction no longer, or days like Friday will become too familiar to bear.